'In Hopper Light'

I knew “Cracker Barrel” as a brand of cheddar cheese my mother sometimes bought when we were kids. The recent brouhaha over “branding” informed me it’s also the name of a chain of restaurants, one of which shares a parking lot with the motel on the West Side of Cleveland where I’m staying. I’d eaten nothing since leaving Houston early Tuesday morning and was feeling hungry, not picky. 

Eating alone in a restaurant always feels a little awkward – and extravagant. It’s a kid’s dream, an experience you want to milk. You can order what you want and as much as you want. The menu at Cracker Barrel isn’t afraid of a little cholesterol, though I was prudent – meatloaf, fried okra, cole slaw, biscuits. Normally I’m a tofu-and-hummus kind of guy, but I was feeling not only hungry but very American.

 

My waiter looked to be about twelve and was desperate to please. I had to reassure him several times that the food was filling and good. He almost begged me to order dessert, which I never eat. Then he handed me a check for fifty-seven dollars and change. Wrong table. I thought he was about to perform seppuku. Then he handed me the right check: under ten bucks. I left a fiver under my plate and remembered John Updike’s “The Grief of Cafeterias”:

 

“Everyone sitting alone with a sorrow,

overcoats on. The ceiling was stamped

of tin and painted over and over.

The walls are newer, and never matched.

SALISBURY STEAK SPECIAL $1.65.

Afterwhiffs of Art Deco chrome,

and the space is as if the space

of the old grand railroad terminals

has been cut up, boxcarred out, and reused.

SOUP SALAD & SANDWICH $1.29

Nobody much here. The happiness

of that at least—of vacancy, mopped.

Behind cased food, in Hopper light,

The servers attend to each other forever.”